thesis of poet x

62 pages • 2 hours read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Character Analysis

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Discussion Questions

Xiomara was delivered via caesarean section fifty minutes after her twin brother, Xavier, was born. Discuss the symbolism of this scenario from Mami’s point of view .

The only pieces of prose in the novel are assignments that Xiomara has written for Ms. Galiano’s English class. Compare and contrast Xiomara’s prose style to her poetry style; what do the differences in style reveal about Xiomara’s personality?

Write a character sketch of Xiomara’s mother from the perspective of Caridad , Xiomara’s oldest friend. Focus on the elements of Mami’s character that Xiomara might find difficult to see.

Don't Miss Out!

Access Study Guide Now

Related Titles

By Elizabeth Acevedo

Afro-Latina

Elizabeth Acevedo

Clap When You Land

Family Lore

With the Fire on High

Featured Collections

Hispanic & Latinx American Literature

View Collection

Novels & Books in Verse

Popular Book Club Picks

Pride & Shame

Realistic Fiction (High School)

CUNY Academic Works

• < Previous

Home > City College > Dissertations and Theses > 907

Dissertations and Theses

Mira muchacha: the latinx bildungsroman in elizabeth acevedo’s the poet x.

Layza M. Garcia , CUNY City College

Date of Award

Document type, first advisor.

Lyn Di Iorio

Second Advisor

Pamela Laskin

Bildungsroman, The Poet X, Elizabeth Acevedo, Latinx, Young Adult, Spoken Word

This thesis explores how the Bildungsroman’s traditional narrative transforms into a window to the Latinx experience in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X. The traditional Bildungsroman features white, male, and European protagonists, according to Louis F. Caton in “Romantic Struggles: The Bildungsroman and Mother-Daughter Bonding in Jamaica Kinclad’s Annie John” (126). Recognized as the first work in the Bildungsroman genre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship (1796) tracks the development and education of the protagonist from boyhood to manhood. In 20th and 21st century literature, the Bildungsroman structure expands to reflect the diverse cultures, lifestyles, and identities of its readers. Acevedo’s Bildungsroman/“coming-of-age” novel is centered on Xiomara Batista, a 15-year-old, Dominican-American teenager living in Harlem who discovers spoken word poetry as an outlet to navigate the world around her. Xiomara’s journey illustrates what some children of immigrants and Latinxs struggle with: the stress of dissonant family expectations and ill-fitting parent country traditions; the search for voice and individuality; and the conflict between blossoming sexual urges and the norms of old-fashioned parents. As the novel progresses, Xiomara responds to relatives and friends who help her have important realizations and also present obstacles to her development. This thesis ultimately explores three aspects of the book: Xiomara’s relationship with her tyrannical, pious mother; her awareness of her changing and maturing body and the effects of the male gaze on her psyche; and the evolution of her observations about her life from inner thoughts captured in a notebook to her performance of her poems at New York City’s Nuyorican Poets Café.

Recommended Citation

Garcia, Layza M., "Mira Muchacha: The Latinx Bildungsroman in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X" (2021). CUNY Academic Works. https://academicworks.cuny.edu/cc_etds_theses/907

Included in

Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons

To view the content in your browser, please download Adobe Reader or, alternately, you may Download the file to your hard drive.

NOTE: The latest versions of Adobe Reader do not support viewing PDF files within Firefox on Mac OS and if you are using a modern (Intel) Mac, there is no official plugin for viewing PDF files within the browser window.

• Colleges, Schools, Centers
• Disciplines

Advanced Search

• Notify me via email or RSS

Author Corner

• Submission Policies
• Submit Work
• City College of New York

Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement

Privacy Copyright

Episodes from poet’s life are recounted in essays | DON NOBLE

Students at the University of Alabama in the late ’60s and early ’70s will remember James Seay. Tall, slender, with long brown hair, and a black eye patch over his right eye, Seay taught poetry writing and was a presence.

His first book, “Let Not Your Hart,” won the prestigious Wesleyan Prize for poetry in 1970. The verse is luminously accessible, a miracle by today’s standards, and many concern his childhood in Mississippi, in Panola County — just east of the Delta.

More: Novel explores apocalypse and religion in Mississippi | DON NOBLE

Seay wrote of poverty. A poem about fishing for catfish by hand, grabbling in Yokna Bottom, concludes “The well-fed do not wade this low river.”

There are poems of hard work, often amusing and admiring.

“Kelly Dug a Hole” is a hymn of praise to simple tasks done perfectly. “Kelly’s hole was true.” If, one day, the building collapses, the last part to fail will be where Kelly dug.

And there is of course a poem about shopping, with his father, for a glass eye after losing his eye to a lawn mower. The boy knows the salesman “would not find my soft brown eye, not in a thousand leather trays.”

Now, half a century and six volumes of poetry later, James Seay has published a book of 20 essays, “Come! Come! Where? Where?: Essays.”

The first — and the last — speak of a loss even greater than the loss of his eye. Seay and his ex-wife, Lee Smith, lost their son Josh to mental illness and early death at 33.

Several return to the themes of “Let Not Your Hart.” Some recount stories of laboring and as foreman of laborers.

In the ironically titled “Big Boss Man,” set in 1959, he is supervising a crew of Black and white workers constructing a classroom building at Ole Miss. The racial and class currents are almost too complex to relate. The Black workers work with and are separate from the white workers. The blue-collar whites resent Seay, the educated boy and their boss. But he concludes, generously, that the surliest among them is just trying to feed his family.

The essays are scattered through time and space.

There are several accounts of fishing trips, a few of literary commentary, and a fresh essay on some places in Faulkner that are Seay’s own places.

The funniest piece is “Avian Voices: Trying Not To Kill a Mockingbird.” In addition to giving musical pleasure, mockingbirds can be very irritating

One favorite is his 1987 visit or attempted visit to Chekhov’s grave. That day there happened to be a funeral for a Soviet official. The guard was under orders to allow no one else into the cemetery.

Seay explained, pled, that he might never again be in the country. “Nyet.”

Desperate to be admitted, Seay has his translator tell the guard “I am a relative of Chekhov”: “My adult life has been given to the cause of literature.”

And that’s the truth.

Don Noble’s newest book is Alabama Noir, a collection of original stories by Winston Groom, Ace Atkins, Carolyn Haines, Brad Watson, and eleven other Alabama authors.

“Come! Come! Where? Where?: Essays”

Author: James Seay

Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 2024

Price: $22.95

Elizabeth Acevedo

Ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

by Elizabeth Acevedo

The poet x literary elements.

Young adult poetry/fiction

Setting and Context

21st-century New York City (Harlem)

Narrator and Point of View

The book is told from the first-person point of view of Xiomara.

Tone and Mood

Tone: confident, euphoric, funny, sympathetic, introspective, anxious, confused, fatalistic, furious

Mood: restless, discontented, revelatory, liberatory, thoughtful, vibrant

Protagonist and Antagonist

The protagonist is Xiomara, a Dominican teenage girl from Harlem who is an aspiring slam poet and who struggles with religion, her relationship with her mother, and the kind of person she wants to be. The antagonist is herself and her own self-consciousness, but also her mother, a devoutly Catholic woman with strict ideas about what her children should be.

Major Conflict

The major conflict is that Xiomara isn't sure who she wants to be - she struggles between feeling socially isolated and wanting to pursue poetry, but also knowing that her mother would oppose that. She struggles with her religious views and whether she wants to be confirmed in the church. All of this comes up against not only her mother's view of what she should be, but also with her own internalized idea of what she should be; thus, the book follows her figuring out who she will be.

The climax of the book is when Xiomara's mother finds her journal and lights it on fire.

Foreshadowing

1. When Xiomara cannot find her notebook, Acevedo is foreshadowing the discovery that Mami has found it. 2. Xiomara catches Twin looking at one of the male basketball players, foreshadowing our discovery that he is gay

Understatement

1. "Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.” Xiomara says this to explain how absent her father truly is. This line is an understatement because her father is more than just not necessarily "not absent": he takes no role in raising his children, stays silent in conflicts, and hides away when things get too difficult.

1. The strong mental connection between Xiomara and Xavier is an allusion to the plethora of twin lore throughout mythology, where twins are seen as magical because of the connection between them. 2. There are numerous allusions to the Bible and Catholicism: priests, mass, communion, confirmation, seven deadly sins, Psalms and Proverbs, Eve, Jesus, etc. 3. There are numerous allusions to contemporary rappers: Nicki Minaj, J. Cole, Kendrick Lamar, Eve

Acevedo uses light imagery - lanterns, the sun, light, etc. - to show how poetry and friends make Xiomara's life better and bring happiness to it. Her life is dark until she finds things that bring light and happiness into it.

1. Xiomara's mother is a paradox. She is a devout Catholic, and her strong religious beliefs should mean that she is a kind and peaceful person (Christianity is a religion of tolerance) but instead she is judgmental and strict, acting in a way that is paradoxical to her religious beliefs. 2. "Just because your father's present / doesn't mean he isn't absent" (65) 3. "...too many things to say and nothing to say at all" (147)

Parallelism

1. Xiomara and Aman meet in biology class as lab partners, where they learn about Darwin in class together. When they get together later in the book, Xiomara compares her heart to one of Darwin's finches taking off, paralleling how the two of them met.

Metonymy and Synecdoche

1. Xiomara frequently talks about how she disagrees with what the church does and what they believe. Obviously the physical church building doesn't believe anything, so this is her using the word "church" as a metonymy for the individual people who work in it.

Personification

1. "Harlem is opening its eyes to September" (3) 2. " . . . I let my knuckles speak for me" (5) 3. " . . . she took all of the stereotypes / and put them in a chokehold / until they breathed out the truth" (126) 4. "And any words I have / suicide-jump off my tongue" (132)

The Poet X Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Poet X is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Which of the following quotes most clearly shows the author's attitude about church?

Are you providing the quotes?

What are 6 important events in order?

Are you asking for bullet points for one particular poem, or for bullet points using the collection?

poet x ''poem Ms.Galiano''

Sorry, what is acevedo?

Study Guide for The Poet X

The Poet X study guide contains a biography of Acevado, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About The Poet X
• The Poet X Summary
• Character List

Essays for The Poet X

The Poet X essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Poet X by Acevado.

• Discovering Self Worth through Spoken Word in "The Poet X"
• Elizabeth Acevedo’s Ode to Adolescent Power: Culture, Conflict, and Reassurance in The Poet X

Find anything you save across the site in your account

By Ocean Vuong

Read by the author.

Do you remember when I tried to be good.

It was a bad time.

So much was burning without a source.

I’m sorry I was so young.

I didn’t mean it.

It’s just this thing is heavy.

How could anyone hold all of it & not melt.

I thought gravity was a law, which meant it could be broken.

But it’s more like a language. Once you’re in it

you never get out. A fool, I climbed out the window

just to look at the stars.

It was too dark & the crickets sounded like people I know

saying something I don’t.

I think I had brothers.

Think I heard them crying once, then laughing, until the laughing

was just in my head.

That’s how it is here: leaky.

One day, while crossing the creek, I met a boy.

Lips red as a scraped knee.

When our eyes met, he gasped. Then raised his rifle.

That’s how I found out I was a squirrel.

That’s how I lost my tail, the only thing I was great at.

I don’t know what my name is but I can feel it.

A throbbing in the blood.

Last night, I heard a voice & climbed

to the tallest branch, so high I forgot all the rules.

It was like being skinned into purpose.

Below me was a rectangle the man had been digging all night.

I watched him a long time, his body a question mark unravelling.

When the light grew pink, the man stopped.

Others, in black coats, gathered around him.

I know I was put here for a reason, but I spend most days

just missing everybody.

The man lowered a box into the slot he had dug.

As if pushing a coin into a giant machine.

That must be how they pay to be here.

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Cynan Jones

By Alexandra Schwartz

By James Folta

By André Alexis